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Mayor Richards needs to make his intentions even clearer

When Mayor Thomas Richards announced last month after losing the Democratic primary that he wouldn’t be a mayoral contender in November, there was no reason to think otherwise.

But given the shenanigans of late to keep Richards’ candidacy on life support, it’s become important that he step forward again and make even clearer his intentions. Richards needs to go farther than declaring he will not run in November. He now needs to tell voters whether he would serve if elected.

The problem doesn’t appear to be with Richards, who has a reputation for high integrity. Rather, emails received by this page last week indicated that Molly Clifford, the city’s director of fire administration, and Gary Walker, chief city spokesman, have been working behind the scenes with the Independence Party to keep Richards’ candidacy alive.

Though Richards has thrown his support behind Lovely Warren, who defeated him handily in the September primary, Clifford, a former Democratic Party chair, and Walker, the city’s director of communications, are pushing for his election on the Independence Party line. Clifford emphasized this week that Richards “has said he wouldn’t campaign ... He has not said that he would not serve.”

In other words, the plan devised by those likely to keep their jobs in a Richards administration seems to be to rally enough voters to give Richards victory on the Independence line, and then convince him to serve. There may not be anything illegal about that approach, but it certainly seems disingenuous. Too, there are divisive racial undertones bubbling up about fairness.

In 1977, James Griffin was defeated in his Democratic primary bid for Buffalo mayor by Arthur Eve, then deputy State Assembly speaker and one of the highest ranking African-Americans in the state Legislature. Griffin openly continued his candidacy on the Conservative and Right-To-Life lines, defeating Eve in November.

City voters should not have to wonder whether Richards really is in or out. He should end the mystery.